


only just a dream

by susiecarter



Category: Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, DC Extended Universe
Genre: Dreamsharing, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Hints of Clark Kent/Bruce Wayne - Freeform, M/M, Nightmares
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-16
Updated: 2017-08-16
Packaged: 2018-12-16 07:06:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11823675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/susiecarter/pseuds/susiecarter
Summary: Bruce is alone in the mountains.Isn't he?





	only just a dream

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ComposerofDiscord](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ComposerofDiscord/gifts).



> This makes a lot of RECKLESS HANDWAVY ASSUMPTIONS about what Bruce might be doing in the mountains in the JL trailer/how long it might take him/whether he had the horse with him the whole time (I'm running with "no")/etc., because I have no idea what the real answers are! But your prompt about him keeping warm up there grabbed me, and I couldn't resist. :D Also, uh, I don't actually know anything about satellite phones, or at least not anything that's not on Wikipedia. I ended up going in sort of a weird direction, ComposerofDiscord, and this is definitely more angst than comedy, but I promise it all ends on an upbeat note! I hope very much that you enjoy this, and that you've had a great DCEU-Ex. ♥

 

 

Bruce liked the mountains.

They were harsh, uncompromising. Vast. Uninterested in making any effort to be comfortable or even hospitable, with any attempt to render them as much doomed to failure. And there was something appealing in the stark silent chill, the endless wind. There were times in Bruce's life when, if he'd permitted the indulgence, he might have thought of himself as a man struggling alone through an uncaring wilderness. Having that sensation made so thoroughly manifest was, in its own way, grimly satisfying.

And he _was_ alone. In this particular pass, surrounded by much higher peaks, even the satellite phone seemed to have abandoned him.

Bruce glanced up at the sky, which was crisply, bonechillingly clear. But that wasn't going to do him any good if all his look angles were blocked by mountainside.

He gave it a try anyway. Even if the call only connected for a moment, it would at least serve as proof of life. Alfred would appreciate it.

He got a crackle, and then a series of scratchy noises that might plausibly have been Alfred talking. He said, "Still alive. Skies clear," just in case Alfred might catch it, and then turned the phone off again.

He'd nudged his hood back to do it, and already his face was stinging with cold.

It felt wonderfully appropriate.

But getting frostbite would slow him down. He'd already set up the tent, with snow piled up against the sides to help hold it in place if the wind picked up. Inside, there was just enough room for one man. One man, one pack, and one very expensive sleeping bag.

When everything was settled just the way it should be, he zipped himself in and rolled onto his side. It would take time for his body heat to accumulate; in the morning, he knew, he'd be warm.

But not yet. He closed his eyes and let the cold sink into him, through him, until it was all he was, and then it couldn't keep him from falling asleep.

 

 

 

 

He dreamed of heat.

Sand, rock, scraped against his boots. Light poured down from overhead. But the most distinct sensation was the sweltering air rippling around him, the thick suffocating ubiquity of heat.

A sizzle; something burning. Flesh, Bruce thought, and not because there was any way to tell, but because he knew.

He'd had this dream before.

The first time, when he'd fallen asleep at the desk in the Cave, had been different. Strange and stark, too clear, too real. But since then he'd had it again and again, and not with that peculiar quality. Just dreams, over and over, fuzzy rebounding echoes.

And he knew how it went. He hung there in his chains, because there were always chains, and waited through the sick tension of the figure approaching, stalking down the rocky corridor. Because there was always a sick tension in it, even though he knew who it would be.

He didn't expect the face to ever lose its clarity. The grim, furious expression, not a flash-fire of volatile anger but the long slow burn of rage, and the eyes, the fierce red glow in the shadows.

The first time, it had all been so linear. Every moment had led right into the next, Superman tugging the cowl off and tossing it away, settling his hand against Bruce's chest and speaking.

But when it was just a dream, there were no rules. The cowl had been there, Bruce was almost sure of it, and then was gone, vanished, without continuity. No distraction from the sensation, the weight of that hand.

And Bruce knew what came next. He braced himself for it, for the sudden sharp pressure, the pain, the sound of his ribcage cracking relentlessly open.

Nothing happened.

Bruce frowned, in the dream. Encountering the unexpected was dragging him toward something close to lucidity.

Superman's eyes had cooled, as they always did, but it usually didn't change the _look_ of him, the inhuman rigidity of the face and that terrible implacable expression.

Except this time. This time, Bruce thought, something had shifted. He wasn't looking at Superman anymore, but at Clark.

And Clark was looking back at him, with an air of vague bewilderment. "You," he said.

Bruce stared at him. That was only a fifth of the line. The script had never changed before.

"You," Clark said again, brows drawing together. He looked down at his own hand, still splayed across Bruce's uniformed chest, and then back up at Bruce. "What is this?"

"That isn't how it goes," Bruce heard himself say.

But that didn't make Clark snap back into Superman's place, didn't start the sequence over. Clark just frowned harder. "How does it go?" he said.

As if he didn't know. As if he hadn't already done it a hundred times, a thousand.

"You know the answer to that," Bruce said, a little impatiently, and just as Clark was opening his mouth to answer, Bruce woke up.

 

 

 

 

It had been strange enough that Bruce still remembered most of it in the morning. The general shape of it, at least. Not how Clark had sounded, not the precise tone of his voice; but most of what he'd said, and the unexpected left turn of it.

But it wasn't important. Bruce rose with the first pale gleam of sun and broke camp with impeccable efficiency, and then set out.

There was a certain meditative purity to the physical effort of the climb, nothing to plan or think about or fill up his head except the next step, the next, the next.

It was a pleasant way to pass the day, and when the sun began to sink, Bruce was distantly sorry for it. But he'd made excellent progress, and it would be a mistake to press on too long. The cold was dangerous enough on its own without adding the challenge of fumbling around in the dark, and night came on quickly at this altitude.

He kept an eye out for level ground, and made camp at the first opportunity. The satellite phone couldn't muster anything beyond that first opening crackle, this time, but Bruce gave it a brief report anyway. His voice came out rough, scratched. First time he'd spoken all day.

He caught himself slowing, as darkness advanced. Lingering over the task of shoring up the tent, taking his time in unrolling his sleeping bag and spreading it out flat.

Ridiculous. He needed to sleep, and would. What did it matter if he dreamed?

It didn't.

He closed his eyes and made himself breathe slowly, evenly, and sooner or later he was dragged down, as he'd known he would be.

And it was as predictable as ever. The sand, the stone; the light. The heat, unbearable and inescapable. Superman's figure was vague this time, a play of indistinct shadow around and beneath those blazing eyes. But it resolved itself as he strode closer, and he put that unstoppable hand to Bruce's chest and looked at Bruce and said, "What _is_ this?"

Bruce went still.

"What's happening?" Clark shook his head, rocking his weight backward onto his heels; but he didn't quite seem able to lift his hand away from Bruce. At least that part of the dream was still right, Bruce thought. "What am I about to do? Am I—am I going to kill you?"

"Yes," Bruce told him flatly. "Of course you are."

"What?" Clark looked horrified, and maybe a little sick. "Why?"

"Because you want to," Bruce said, with what seemed even to his dream-self to be an admirable degree of patience. "You must want to."

" _No_. No, of course I don't want to." The shape of the dream, its real shape, was still holding around Clark's hand, around Bruce; Bruce could almost see the seams where the rest of Clark had torn it open, deviating wildly from the track he was meant to be on. "Batman—Wayne—"

"Yes," Bruce explained to him, "you do. You have to. You're dead."

Clark went pale, tight-lipped.

Bruce wasn't sure why. It was all so much simpler, so much easier to say, here in the dream. Where it wasn't real; where nothing but the inside of his own head could hear him. "You're dead," Bruce repeated, "and it's my fault."

"I remember that," Clark said slowly, and a strange hollow expression flashed across his face, pained and inward-looking. "I remember dying. But it wasn't you. It wasn't you, it was—" and then he broke off, and his hand finally came away from Bruce's chest, the dream giving way around it with grudging reluctance.

He stared at it, and then down at himself. And then he touched his own chest instead, the sternum, just over the crest across the front of the uniform.

And as though it had been there underneath the surface of him all along, the wound appeared, staving in through the ribs, red and wet and gaping.

"It doesn't hurt," Clark murmured.

"Of course it doesn't hurt," Bruce said. "You're dead."

Which was exactly what made the dream so important. Clark had to be alive, to kill Bruce. The first time had felt so real; it had to mean something. It _had_ to. And Clark couldn't trap Bruce in the desert and chain him up and murder him unless he was alive.

It was important to remember that.

Bruce reached out. He shouldn't have been able to, of course, but the chains were gone, just like the cowl, and so he could. He could reach out with his dream-hand and touch Clark's chest, even though that wasn't part of the dream most of the time.

"You're dead," Bruce said again, quietly. And Clark looked at him, brow furrowing, and then Bruce woke up.

 

 

 

 

It didn't mean any more than it had last time. Bruce knew that.

But somehow it was difficult to remember. The emptiness around him, the endless planes of snow, became a curse instead of a blessing; where it had been easy to empty his mind, it was instead hard to occupy it. Or hard to occupy it with anything else, at least.

He didn't make it as far as he should have, that day. There was simply nothing to think about except for the faint shreds that remained of the dream: Clark's face, his wound, the way Bruce had reached out for him. The way Clark had held still and let him.

He pushed on a little further into the late afternoon than he should have, and he had to set up a lantern to finish making camp. He should have regretted it more than he did.

But the later his usual setup tasks dragged on, the longer it would be before he bowed to necessity and went to sleep.

The situation with the satellite phone had not improved. But he dialed anyway, in the hope that Alfred's end of the connection would at least register the attempt.

And then, inexplicably, he sat there staring down at the phone, and said to it, "Clark's dead."

It crackled at him, a brief sharp snow of white noise.

"Clark's dead," Bruce repeated, "and I'm dreaming about him."

Another burst of static, and then the phone went silent in his hands.

He thought about staying up. He'd been awake longer than this; he'd borne worse. But he hadn't been in the mountains then, dealing with not only cold but altitude, weather, low oxygen concentration. Anything that slowed his reactions or affected his judgment was even more dangerous than usual, and by at least a factor of ten.

And, petty as it was, something in him rebelled at the thought of ceding the field. To his own mind, at that.

He sat there for a moment longer, alone in the cold and the dark. And then he crawled into the tent, closed everything up tightly behind himself, and reluctantly, grudgingly, went to sleep.

 

 

 

 

The dream derailed itself even earlier, this time around. Bruce barely had time to feel the overpowering warmth, the low solid clench in his gut at Superman's inexorable approach, before the wheels came off.

"What the hell," Clark said, slowing to a halt.

His hand was extended, but he wasn't close enough, wasn't touching Bruce at all. Bruce felt almost cheated.

"You know what to do," he said brusquely.

And for a moment, he thought that would be enough. Clark stepped forward, arm still outstretched; but he looked more baffled than enraged, not the right expression at all. "I remember what you said last time," Clark agreed. "But I still don't want to do it."

The chains had been there, Bruce felt sure, but they were gone now. He grimaced and rubbed a hand across his face. "Christ," he muttered. "Shameless."

"What?"

"Shameless," Bruce repeated, louder.

Clark stared at him, and then made a helpless little gesture of unenlightenment, the failure of the penny to obey gravity and drop.

"Me," Bruce said. "This." He shook his head again. "This self-indulgent bullshit. I know how this dream is supposed to end, and it's not like this." Ridiculous, that he was so desperate to be forgiven that he'd constructed himself this puppet-Clark, built it and animated it and breathed subconscious life into it, all so he could tell himself he hadn't done anything wrong.

Clark looked at him blankly for a moment longer, and then narrowed his eyes. "This is _your_ dream," he said slowly, and then, as if it needed to be said twice, "You—dream of me, like this."

Bruce raised an eyebrow. "Not like this," he said, because usually it was true. Usually Superman just did what he was supposed to, instead of standing around saying he didn't _want_ to.

And the dream jerked abruptly back into place. The chains had been gone; they were back. Bruce was braced against them, suspended by them, and Clark—Superman—was standing in front of him with that stonily murderous expression, one hand settled against Bruce's chest.

Except all that happened was that Clark's eyes went wide.

"And then what?" he said quietly.

"You kill me," Bruce said. "You tear my heart out."

But Clark didn't follow the implicit instruction. He stood there looking at Bruce, and then he swallowed. "I wouldn't do that," he said.

"You should."

"Well, I won't," Clark said, frowning.

And then, all at once, everything changed. The Superman uniform was gone; Clark was just Clark Kent, in jeans and plaid flannel, though Bruce's subconscious hadn't seen fit to equip him with a pair of glasses. And Bruce was in a suit. He looked down at himself and couldn't guess why he might have picked the one he'd worn to Luthor's fundraiser. But there must have been a reason.

But Clark's hand had stayed where it was, pressed flat and steady against Bruce's breastbone.

"You frustrated me," Clark was saying. "You wanted to hurt me, you wouldn't listen to me. But I don't want to kill you. All right? I'm not going to rip your heart out."

It was just a dream. That was why it was permissible to say it. That was why it was allowed. "You already did," Bruce told him gently.

Clark frowned, uncomprehending, and then belatedly looked down at his chest. Or, more precisely, at the wound that had killed him: suddenly there, reopened again, deep and sickening and impossible to ignore.

And then he looked up again, and his gaze wasn't horrified or angry but steady, searching. "Bruce," he said, and then Bruce woke up.

 

 

 

 

"It isn't him," Bruce told the satellite phone. "It isn't."

The satellite phone hissed and clicked, unconvinced.

But it wasn't Clark. It couldn't be. Clark was dead. This was altitude, mild hypoxia, a subconscious reaction to the sheer liminality of this experience; the solitude, the endless blinding snow, the sensation of such thorough remoteness from everything familiar. Another day's hike, two at the absolute most, and he should be past the highest set of peaks. He'd begin his descent, the phone would work again, and his mind would no longer be driven to such ludicrous extremes.

It made sense. But all the well-reasoned logic in the world proved unable to stop him from feeling something that was almost anticipation, a low prickling eagerness, when he settled himself in his sleeping bag and closed his eyes.

And, sure enough, he dreamed of Clark.

He expected the stone, the passageway, the heat. But none of it was there. This was, somehow, a different dream.

A room. A kitchen; a table. Clark was sitting at it, tilting his face into the sunshine pouring through the windows, as if he didn't know Bruce was there. As if he'd been there already, before Bruce had arrived.

But that didn't make sense.

And then Clark blinked his eyes open and saw Bruce, and turned in his chair. "There you are," he said.

"Waiting long?" Bruce said dryly, because of course he couldn't have been. This was Bruce's dream.

But Clark looked like he was thinking about it. "It doesn't feel like it," he said at last. "I'm not sure I was ever here when you weren't, before. I don't think I was even really awake the first time, but I am now."

Bruce glanced around them pointedly. "No," he said, "you aren't."

"I don't mean _awake_ awake," Clark said, with mild exasperation; the corner of his mouth was quirking up. "But I wasn't—I wasn't all here."

"And now you are."

Clark bit his lip and looked away. "Bruce," he said slowly, "you keep telling me I'm dead. But I'm not sure I am. No," he added, "stop that," and Bruce saw with a deep, welling dread that the death-wound was blooming across Clark's chest again, sinking into being, blood spilling out across that sunny kitchen table. "No," Clark said again, firmly, standing, and with the dream's swerving quickness, the blood was gone, plaid flannel clean and intact. "Bruce, don't."

"Not dead, just sleeping?" Bruce said, eyebrow raised. He wanted to laugh, to show Clark how ridiculous that was, but it seemed somehow risky to try. "We put you in the ground, Clark. I was there."

"Not a lot of things can hurt me," Clark argued. "When they do, sometimes it takes time. The nuke—"

"You got nuked?" Bruce couldn't help but ask. He remembered the light; but he hadn't been in a position to know for certain whether that missile had actually hit Clark.

" _Yes_ ," Clark said. "See? I got _nuked_ and I got better. But it took a few minutes."

No. Impossible. "It's been more than a few minutes," Bruce heard himself say.

"But if I'm just in some kind of Kryptonian coma," Clark said, "then it all makes sense. I'm coming out of it, a little bit. I've come up far enough to get here, wherever this is. To get to the same place you are when you dream."

"That's ridiculous."

Clark crossed his arms and raised an eyebrow. "More ridiculous than everything else that's happened to either of us so far?"

A hit, Bruce had to admit. But he didn't have to acknowledge it. "Setting aside every other implausibility in your theory," and he allowed his tone to do the work of asserting that there were clearly quite a few, "why would you be here? Why me?"

And Clark looked at him and swallowed, and then said quietly, "Because you dream about me." He hesitated, biting his cheek and letting the silence stretch; and then he uncrossed his arms to gesture around them and added, "Look where we are. This is my house, Bruce. You've never been here."

"No," Bruce agreed. "Which means that for all I know, this looks absolutely nothing like your house."

Clark opened his mouth and then reluctantly closed it again, and huffed out an irritated breath through his nose. "Okay," he said, "fine. Then who do you think you're arguing with right now?"

"Myself," Bruce said, because it was the obvious answer. "Whatever part of me it is that wants what you're saying to be true. No matter how little sense it makes," he added pointedly.

Clark stared at him helplessly for a long moment, and then shook his head. "When I get out of this coffin," he said, "and I start making bondage jokes about you and those chains, you're going to feel silly for not believing me."

His tone was wry, like it was supposed to be funny; but Bruce had snagged too hard on the first part to laugh at the second. "You can't—feel it, can you?"

"What?" Clark said, and then caught his drift. "The coffin? No, I—that was just a guess. You said you put me in the ground, that's all. I meant it," he added, "when I said I thought I was just starting to wake up. This, being here, talking to you? It's the closest I've gotten, the most awake I've been. I think it's helping." He hesitated for a second, eyes narrowing, and then said, "And that almost sounded like you're starting to believe me."

As if Bruce's belief or non-belief had any effect on the facts. "Let's say it's possible," Bruce allowed. "If you are alive, then why is this happening? Why haven't you already come back?"

Clark looked briefly confused. And then his gaze went inward, a vague frown crossing his brow. "I think—it's hard," he said slowly. "I'm tired. And it's dark down here." Clark didn't move, but with a flicker, the dream changed around him; the kitchen was gone, the table, and they were in a field instead, wheat-gold stalks waving around them, an armslength apart. "I need sun," Clark said, squinting up at it, glowing with it.

And in that moment, it seemed profoundly, inescapably true, almost tautological. Looking at him like this, in blazing sun and endless warmth; as if this were what Bruce's mind had been trying to approximate all along, dragging Superman back into that desert cave over and over again, making him stride out of the shadows and toward Bruce, toward the light.

"But I'll get there," Clark was adding, and he reached out and poked Bruce in the arm with a grin. "I'll get there, and then you'll see. _So_ many bondage jokes."

The grin stayed—and then began to falter, just a little, which was when Bruce realized he'd taken far too long to respond.

"I—don't think I ever saw you smile," Bruce said, low, a little absent, unable to look away. And, like so many other things, what shouldn't have been possible felt possible anyway, in the dream: he reached out and touched Clark's face, fingertips cautious over the curve of a dimple, just before it could drop away entirely. "I wonder if that's really what it looked like."

And then it was gone. Bruce looked for a moment longer at where it had been, lingering and regretful; and then he met Clark's eyes and was abruptly conscious of the fact that his hand was still against Clark's cheek.

Clark was staring at him, eyes wide, face pink and startled. He swallowed once, twice, and then turned, slow and deliberate, into Bruce's hand instead of away. "Bruce," he said, hushed.

And then Bruce woke up.

 

 

 

 

Another day's hike, Bruce had told himself, two at most.

He did it in one. It was easy to set a strong pace and stick to it; he felt good, energized. Well-rested.

He kept an eye on the sky, the widening deepening bowl of it as the mountains dropped gradually away to either side. And when it was enough—surely it had to be enough—he stopped and made camp, with meticulous precision, and then let himself get out the satellite phone.

He'd been banking on it, and yet the successful connection still almost felt like a surprise.

Alfred's tone seemed to suggest that he felt the same. "Sir? I hadn't thought you'd call in for another hour at least. Is everything all right?"

Bruce glanced at the sinking sun, suddenly conscious that it still hadn't quite dropped below the highest peak to the west. "Decided to call it an early night," he said, bland.

"I see," Alfred said slowly. "You're not injured?"

"I'm fine," Bruce said. "I'll begin the descent in the morning."

"As you say, sir," Alfred agreed.

Bruce paused to watch the fog of his breath whirl away from him; to give Alfred an estimate of the wind conditions, except he found himself just looking out across the mountains. The warm reddening band of color along the horizon, as the sun set, and the light falling in peach, pink, gold, across the snow; the deepening blue shadows.

It really was beautiful up here.

"One other thing," he said aloud. "If you would—please get in touch with Martha Kent. I'd like to arrange to visit her in Kansas, when we're done here."

"Certainly, sir."

"At the farmhouse," Bruce felt compelled to add.

A pause. "I shall endeavor to be specific, sir," Alfred said at last, with a certain baffled curiosity leaching through his usual dry tone.

"Thank you, Alfred."

He did update Alfred as to the weather conditions, the status of his supplies, whether his gear was all holding up as expected (it was); and then they disconnected, and Bruce packed the phone carefully away.

Would the house look the way he'd dreamed it? He didn't know what to think, what to hope for. It was ridiculous.

But, maybe, not impossible.

He settled into his sleeping bag with an unaccustomed lightness in his chest; and the last thing he thought, just before he fell asleep, was how comfortable he was—how warm.

 

 


End file.
